The Working Woman's Stay at Home Dilemma

[Stravo]

A question I had after making an interesting observation. I work with many professional women and invariably aside from the marriage thing what always inevitably comes along that stalls some woman's run at partnership or higher positions is the baby. Eventually, most women, aside from the real hot blooded go getters that are more than happy to give up the chance to have children, or in the very least be a member of that ever growing number of late 40 something moms, decides that having a child is something they want to do and put their career on hold for about a year to have the baby.

Most women (sometimes those hot blooded go getters can be annoying) applaud the decision and support it 100%. HOWEVER should this professional woman then decide that she wants to give up her profession that becomes a bone of contention for many modern women. Especially among the young.

Young professional women can react so vehemently to the idea of giving up your career to raise your child that it is almost venemous. Like the woman just spat on Susan B Anthony and threw off her shoes to walk around her house pregnant and barefoot.

I personally think that's just silly. Anyone who is serious about raising children should consider having one parent stay at home with the child to raise them especially during their formative years before school. I've seen many products of the nanny that stays all day with the kids while mommy works and usually it ends up with the kids bonding with the nanny instead of mommy and what does mommy miss out on? The first words. the first steps. the funny moments.

I happen to believe it is just more healthy this way. But when a woman in my office announces she is staying home to raise their child the women here carp on and on with two general themes - she is a gold digger who just couldn't wait to get pregnant so she could stay at home. As if, by the way, staying at home with a baby is a permanent vacation from work. I have always said that when it comes to the pressures and stress of raising a child at home versus work give me work any day. I get off easy.

Second theme is - she just gave up. She could accomplish so much if she remained working. The feminist streak comes out strongest in this theme with many women viewing it as almost a betrayal that she's taking the old fashioned approach.

You know what? I grew up in a latchkey kid generation where both parents were working their asses off to make ends meet and many of my friends were not able to enjoy seeing both parents. Frankly this was not cool and I like to see a trend where one parent stays at home - I know throughout this post I have been referring to stay at home moms but that's really what this is about. How women treat other women for taking that road. Almost every man I've spoken with has told me, if they could afford it, they would gladly like the woman to stay at home and raise the kids.

So the question here is why do women give each other such a hard time over something that seems to make sense to me. If you're able to stay at home with your child why are you a golddigger or somehow lazy or worse for doing so? Again these are personal observations so your mileage may vary on this point but let me know what you've experienced or what your thoughts are on this.

[Omeganian]

My mother was working on an electronics factory before she started a family. Then, she switched to being a typist without thinking much. That was a job she could do at home.

[Knife]

Your example only works in a very demanding career, and not really for a vast majority of jobs. Most marriages still need both people out working, so if Mom can land a 40 hour or less job it doesn't interfere much. A lot of parents work opposite shifts so there is a parent at home with the kiddies at all times, others patch it together with baby sitters until the kids are in school, then patch it together with after school programs and such.

Your question, though, seems to only work when dealing with one of those very demanding, cut throat, career thingies where it is 50% office politics and 50% hard work putting in 80 hours a week. My point of view on something like that, when the younger, up and coming see it as some sort of betrayal to modern women, is that they just haven't gotten to the point yet where they understand the significance of raising their kids. And why would they, they don't have one yet. Many people have lots of preconceived notions of parenthood that usually evaporate when they have a kid.

[AMT]

Your example only works in a very demanding career, and not really for a vast majority of jobs. Most marriages still need both people out working, so if Mom can land a 40 hour or less job it doesn't interfere much.

But why should she if one parent can support the family? A full-time parent at home would be much more conductive to helping raise a child properly (assuming the parent is competant)

Personally, if two parents can afford to raise a child with one salary, it should be done, whether or not it's the mother or the father who stay at home. It seems there's a bit of a social stigma on either parent for doing so, not just the mother. We seem to put too much emphasis on career and earnings rather than an ability to be a good parent, no matter the gender.

[Knife]

Your example only works in a very demanding career, and not really for a vast majority of jobs. Most marriages still need both people out working, so if Mom can land a 40 hour or less job it doesn't interfere much.

But why should she if one parent can support the family? A full-time parent at home would be much more conductive to helping raise a child properly (assuming the parent is competant)

Personally, if two parents can afford to raise a child with one salary, it should be done, whether or not it's the mother or the father who stay at home. It seems there's a bit of a social stigma on either parent for doing so, not just the mother. We seem to put too much emphasis on career and earnings rather than an ability to be a good parent, no matter the gender.

Sure, why not. Good luck on that though. If one parent makes boo-koo bucks so the other can stay home, all the better. Then again, if one parent puts in 80 hour weeks to provide for the family, and another couple both work and do 40 hours each, the kid is still seeing the same amount of parents.

[SilverHawk]

I just think the stigma should be removed is all. Without getting into specifics of the feminist movement, ostracizing those who actually want to stay home and raise their kids in their early years seems like a dumb move to me, personally. Though I would be hesitant to throw this as the cause for the mal-adjusted generation that followed in the 90's when this mind-set hit full swing. (The "not having a parent at home" deal.)

[SCRawl]

Co-worker reactions to the parenting issue must depend quite a lot on where you live and what sort of industry you work in. My wife took the year off to look after our oldest when she was a baby -- mothers (and, to a lesser extent, fathers) get unemployment benefits during that time here in Canada -- and when that was up I quit my job to become the stay-at-home Dad, since she had the better-paying government job. At no time did either of us get any flak about betraying the sisterhood, being a kept man, or having a permanent vacation. Indeed, aside from the odd wise-crack I've had nothing but admiring comments from my former co-workers and other acquaintances. We're fortunate enough that it only takes one of us to pay the bills, but come September -- when my four-year-old starts full-time school -- I'll be looking for paying work again. Gotta save for that retirement

[The Duchess of Zeon]

If there was a strong extended family structure the obvious solution would be to have children extremely young and then your extended family cares for them until they're old enough that being a working mother is more viable. Unfortunately that isn't the case in the US and in most other countries that do have such a system the climate is too misogynistic to consider it.

However, there's no real right answer other than the fact that children who receive the most constant attention during the first four to five years of life with the most aggressive parenting toward creativity and learning are the ones who turn out best. One idea wold be to expand online graduate degree opportunities; a woman could enter the workforce with a bachelor's degree, leave it for five years to raise a child but also over those five years finish a professional degree of some kind and re-enter the workforce. The bonus from having done so would compensate for the lost seniority, at least in principle. This to be perfectly fair would require such programmes to be specially focused arond women who left the workforce for motherhood, and should be a free benefit of the government for having children.

But there's always going to be situations outside of this, and being a stay at home mother is ultimately being dependent on someone else. It would be better if both parents could share equitably the duties of raising a child which would include both of them continuing to work but at reduced rates and degrees of effort over those first crucial years of life, their time staggered so one is always home. The problem with that is that it, again, requires government intervention to force employers to offer such options. And in all cases both parents should be home for the first year of life like in the Scandinavian countries where women have a year of paid maternity leave and men are rapidly getting up to the same level. Again, legislation is required to actually achieve that.

A better answer might be that this question is only such an irritating one because the United States is so hostile to working parents, in part I think to try and continue to enable this false dichotomy of woman in the home/poorly raised children. Because the government can intervene to establish ground rules--the year of paid leave after you give birth to a child, for starters--which would make working motherhood much more viable while retaining the psychological health of growing children, but refuses to do so because of the influence of conservatives who want to force women back into the home quite unambiguously.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Do they really? I think the corporate paymasters like inflating the size of the labor force, suppressing wages, and people desperately needing two breadwinners to just stay afloat in an era of declinig equality and social security, inflation, debt, and speculation.

[Simon_Jester]

[reads Duchess's post]
[reads IP's post]

Social conservatives... corporate paymasters... Why are these options mutually exclusive? That sounds like an unholy alliance in the making if ever I heard one.

[Shaun]

I think we're long past the age where any more than a tiny percentage of children can expect to have a full time parent (usually the mother) unless they are prepared to live in rented accommodation on hand me downs. Sad as that may be, it's just the natural progression of things in our consumerist driven society.

[Utsanomiko]

A major dilemma for working mothers, which in my experience often goes unaccounted, is just how many expenditures go into holding a job and caring for a child whilst away from home.

I will admit first of all that I am not talking about high-salary 'career women' but rather the larger number of women on the lower end of the middle-class and white-collar/business-casual jobs; teachers, customer service, receptionists, data entry/secretarial jobs, and so on. The 20k-30k a year jobs that are in greater numbers and accessibility to modern women yet fewer avenues for growth, but the pressure to be successful and independent and have a big luxury budget are very much still present.

Let's say a particular young woman has a baby or a couple small children and, looking for some supplemental income for the family, finds a decent office job where she can earn about $2000 a month. For the first several years this child will need daycare, which in this era suburban sprawl few people have local family or neighbors they trust, decent daycare provision is seen as a job itself; Fifty bucks for an 8-hour day will eat half that woman's paycheck.

Then there's transportation, and for born & raised midwesterners such as myself, that means big American automobiles on our big bus-less roads. Now, many young couples already have two cars even with with one income, but I'll add it in under the assumption she's paying for her own car herself. That's easily another $650 a month for payments, insurance, a tank of fuel a month, and a couple bucks set aside for maintenance. Many of these work environments keep a dress code of at least business-casual, so there'll be additional expenses for clothes compared to what she wears around the house or for infrequent events. Even without the fashion industry being a huge influence on culture, who wants to be seen wearing the same five outfits a week? A frugal budget of a couple $25 discount items every other week is still another $100 a month just to work comfortably.

I'll finally add lunch expenditures, although this was something I myself all but eliminated from my past job. Sure, hanging out with my co-workers when they all left for lunch at local restaurants was a great way to socialize each, but when I realized the added cost compared to what I could put together at home was $200 a month, I stuck with brown-bagging except on special occasions. Few followed suit.

Adding these costs together, My example's final income is $50. Fifty more dollars a month to improve quality of living or to cover the extra costs of raising a kid, in exchange for raising them in a daycare environment (and for filling up a job somebody else needed for their currently zero-income household). And that's assuming taxes and insurance were already factored out. Add in college loans for a degree she might have needed just to get picked for a desk job, and suddenly this modern lifestyle has created a personal deficit. Don't forget she'll also be recommended to buy a new cellphone plan and maybe a credit card to rack up debt like everybody else.

This is certainly not a practical way of spending money, but from what I've seen amongst my age group and income bracket, it's the norm. People spend a huge amount of money just to earn a little more; their incomes expand but their practical expenses and savings don't increase. That's the majority of our society. Our whole economy is bloated with service & retail jobs for companies selling big cars, new TVs, fancy houses, and refinanced loans, so these people can then buy more big cars, new TVs, fancy houses, and refinanced loans from them. And I'm starting to think its benefits haven't outweighed its consequences upon society's culture and upbringing.